Longarm glanced at the sheriff’s arm, which was hanging crookedly from the shoulder, and agreed with Sanderson’s diagnosis. But the local lawman was still alive, and that was more than he had any right to expect after having been so close to the blast.
Where were all the townspeople? Longarm asked himself as he looked around the street. El Aguila’s gang was getting further away with every passing second—and Sonia Guiterrez was with them, held prisoner. Longarm needed someone to show up and take care of Sanderson so he could get started after the outlaws. The street was deserted, though. Everybody in town was hiding out until they were sure that the raid was over. Longarm supposed he couldn’t blame them. They were ordinary citizens. Their job wasn’t fighting bloodthirsty desperadoes like El Aguila’s bunch.
But his job was to protect the members of the diplomatic parties who had come to Del Rio to negotiate, and since Sonia was one of them—albeit unofficially—he had failed. Longarm didn’t like to fail.
“Stay right here, Sheriff,” he told Sanderson. “I’m sure somebody’ll be along to tend to you pretty soon.”
“Where else am I ... goin?” Sanderson asked. He looked up at the federal lawman who knelt beside him and blinked blood out of his eyes. “What’s wrong ... Marshal?”
“One of El Aguila’s men grabbed Senorita Guiterrez.”
Sanderson found the strength to exclaim, “Good Lord! How ...”
“She was out in the street and one of those bastards grabbed her up from horseback,” Longarm said. He didn’t explain what Sonia had been doing out of the hotel in the first place.
Sanderson gripped his arm. “You got to ... go after ‘em ... get her back ...”
“That’s just what I intend to do,” Longarm promised him.
“Long!” The shout came from down the street. Longarm turned his head and saw Lazarus Coffin running toward them. The big Texas Ranger had the pearl-handled Remington revolver in his hand, but there were no longer any enemies to shoot at. All the outlaws had galloped out of Del Rio.
“I thought I told you to stay at the hotel,” grated Longarm as Coffin pounded up.
“I tried, but that fella Don Alfredo’s about half crazy out of his mind scared. Seems like his daughter ain’t nowhere to be found, and he ordered me to come look for her.”
Longarm nodded. “One of El Aguila’s men got her.”
“What? You mean she’s dead?”
“Nope. Scooped up and carried off. Kidnapped.”
“Shit!” Coffin said fervently. “This is turnin’ into a bigger mess than I thought.”
Amen to that, Longarm added silently.
“What do we do now?” Coffin went on. “We’re goin’ to chase after those owlhoots, aren’t we?” He gestured at Sanderson. “And what happened to the sheriff here?”
“I damn near got ... blowed up ... you big ox,” said Sanderson. “One of those raiders tossed ... dynamite into the office.”
Longarm got to his feet. “You look after the sheriff,” he told Coffin. “I’m going to find a horse and get started after El Aguila’s gang.”
“You can’t go by yourself,” argued Coffin. “Hell, this is more my job than it is yours, since this is Texas and I’m a Ranger.”
“Somebody want to ... gimme a hand down to the doc’s office?” asked Sanderson, interrupting the argument before it could get started good.
Longarm and Coffin both reached down and carefully lifted the sheriff to his feet. Sanderson slipped his uninjured right arm around Coffin’s waist. “Come on, Lazarus,” he said. “You can catch up to Marshal Long later.”
Coffin grumbled and glowered, but he set up off the street toward the doctor’s office, holding Sanderson upright and steadying the local lawman. Their progress was slow but steady.
Longarm turned and hurried toward his original destination, the closest livery stable. As he trotted through the open double doors, a voice that was quavery with fear called out, “Who’s there? Don’t move, mister, I got a gun on you.”
Longarm hoped that wasn’t true, because the owner of the voice sounded so spooked that he might shoot at anything without any warning or provocation. Holding his hands in plain sight, Longarm said, “I’m a lawman, a deputy United States marshal. I’m not looking for trouble. I just need to borrow a horse so that I can go after those men who just raided the town.”
A short, stocky, balding man with tufts of white hair above each ear raised up from behind several bales of hay that had been stacked to one side of the stable. He didn’t have a gun, as he had indicated earlier, but he was clutching the handle of a pitchfork with wickedly curving tines. They glittered in the light from a lantern that was hung on a nail in the wall nearby.
“A lawman, you say?” The stable man’s voice was still reedy and nervous.
“That’s right,” said Longarm. “I can show you my badge and identification papers if you want.”
The man shook his head. “No, I reckon that’s all right. I’ve seen you around town with Sheriff Sanderson and that big galoot of a Ranger, so I suppose you must be telling the truth. You’re going after those outlaws, you say?”
“That’s right.” Longarm didn’t waste time explaining about how Sonia Guiterrez had been kidnapped. “Do you have a horse I can use?”
The man lowered the pitchfork. “Right over there,” he said, pointing to one of the stalls. “That bay mare’s a good horse. Need a saddle? Got a couple in the tack room.”
